TD Jakes - The Principles of Provocation (09/22/2018)
God often uses provocation through unlikely people and situations to stir discontentment and hunger in us, pushing us toward His greater purpose, as seen in the story of Hannah whose barrenness was aggravated by Peninnah's fruitfulness until she cried out to God and received the promised son Samuel. The key is to respond with faith and desperate prayer rather than resignation, trusting that God will reverse the barren areas and make the children of the barren more than those of the fruitful.
The Purpose of Provocation
The reason I'm sharing this message is to help you catch a glimpse of how God operates. He will bring you into a room, into an environment, into a relationship, into a place, and let you see things to provoke you. He will put you around people who have studied, and they will make you study because God lets you hear them to provoke you.
God will allow you to enter into a space of uncomfortableness, because provocation is not comfortable. Provocation is aggravating. Provocation is irritating. Provocation is frustrating because it makes you come face to face with where you are and realize that this is not enough. Provocation makes you hungry. Provocation makes you thirsty. Provocation makes you restless. Provocation makes you seek something beyond where you are. Provocation makes you discontented.
Hannah's Comfortable Life Disrupted
Hannah would have been fine. She was married to Elkanah. Things were going well. Elkanah was a wealthy man. She was married into wealth. Everything was going fine. She was living in comfort. Elkanah had two wives. The name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other was Peninnah. Hannah was happy, satisfied, comfortable, contented, and relaxed, but God did not want her to stay comfortable, contented, satisfied, and relaxed.
Why not? Because Hannah's womb was shut up, and she could not have children. There was some condition in her body that would not allow her to conceive. God did not heal the condition immediately. He provoked her instead.
There is nothing as irritating as being provoked once you have decided, "Maybe this is not for me. Maybe I'm not supposed to have it. Maybe it's not God's will for my life. Maybe I'm supposed to be alone. Maybe I'm supposed to be by myself. Maybe I'm supposed to stay down like this. Maybe I'll never be happy."
How the Flesh Resists Provocation
See, the flesh will make a deal to keep you from being provoked, to keep you from stretching into the next dimension. The flesh will talk you out of faith. It will talk you out of the uncomfortableness of believing God that your life does not have to be the way it is. Even though you have gotten used to it does not mean it is God's will for your life.
Elkanah had two wives. Hannah was good with it. Her problem was that Peninnah took the same man that Hannah had and did more with him. If Peninnah had not done more with him, Hannah could have told herself, "Maybe I don't have any children because of Elkanah." But when he was with Hannah, nothing happened, yet when he was with Peninnah, she started having baby after baby after baby.
The Bible says that the Lord blessed Peninnah to have babies so she could provoke Hannah.
The Power of Seeing Others Blessed
Every time you turn around, Peninnah is walking around pregnant again. Hannah is trying to be cool about it, act like it does not matter, but here she comes pregnant again, barefoot and pregnant every time you turn around. If she was not pregnant, then I could say it was not possible.
If God had not delivered anybody from depression, then you could sit in your depression and say, "Maybe it is not possible." But every time you turn around, God will show you somebody who has been through what you have been through, and yet they came out.
Have you ever been in a place that you did not belong, that you did not fit, and you did not have the credentials or the qualifications or the status to be there, and you were wondering, "Why am I here?" Let me tell you why: to provoke you.
The more Peninnah got pregnant, the more Hannah got depressed. Now Hannah is walking around upset. She is not sick. She is not broke. Everything that she was happy about is still there, but now she is upset.
Elkanah says, "Woman, what is wrong with you?" "I do not have any children." He says, "Am I not better to you than ten sons? Is it not enough to be married to me?"
When Provocation Changes Your Satisfaction
Sometimes once you are provoked, you can never be satisfied with what you used to be satisfied with. Hannah said, "I want something more." Elkanah used to be enough, but now that I see what you did with Peninnah, I want something more.
You know what God wants on Sunday morning? He does not want happy people. He does not want shouting people. He wants hungry people who want something more.
So the woman who could not get pregnant with a fertile man now goes to an invisible God and says, "God, I am not satisfied. I have all of these tents, I have all of this stuff, I have a man who loves me, he has given me a double portion, but what I want he cannot give me."
Desperate Prayer in the Temple
She is in there praying and crying out to God, and when the priest comes in, he looks at her and misunderstands what she is doing, and he calls her a drunk woman.
Now, to all of you conservative, refined people who refrain from any kind of expression, if Hannah had been sitting there calmly, nobody would think she was drunk. She must have been staggering. She must have been stumbling around a little bit. She must have been murmuring in the church and staggering.
When you want something bad enough that you stop worrying about your image and stop worrying about what you look like and stop worrying about what people think about you, God will open up the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing you will not have room enough to receive.
Singing in Barrenness
In the Bible days, when a woman gave birth to a promise, she would sing. When Mary was pregnant with Jesus, she sang a song to the Lord. When Hannah got pregnant with Samuel, she sang a song to the Lord.
But the Bible reverses it. The pregnant woman is supposed to sing, but Isaiah said, "Sing, O barren woman." Sing, the woman whose doors are shut. Sing when you cannot see a way out. Sing when things are getting worse instead of better. Sing, O barren woman.
Sing, for the children of the barren woman shall be more than the children of the married wife. In other words, the very one that looked like they were not going to get it is the very one that is going to get it.
If there is any area in your life that is shut up, that is not working for you, that will not open, the Lord just said, "Sing, O barren woman." Sing in that barren house. The children of the barren woman shall be more than the children of the married wife.
God said, "I am going to do so much with the Gentiles," who were barren, "that I am going to provoke my people to jealousy."
God's Love Through Provocation
So, I really did not come to preach to the person who has everything. I came to preach to the person who is barren in some area of your life. I came to tell you that the tail is going to become the head, that the last shall be first, that the stones that the builders rejected shall become the cornerstone.
And if you have the faith to stand there in your barrenness and give God a praise like it is already done, the children of the barren woman shall be more than the children of the married wife.
Isn't it interesting that God loves us so much that He is willing to provoke us? Just when you have decided that you are never going to amount to what you thought you would be, God will use someone else and their blessing to show you what is yet possible. He will allow you to smell it in order to ignite a hunger inside of you.
Now, do not become envious. Instead, become determined and make a move by faith. Everything God has for you, you can still have. Move, and watch God respond in ways that will utterly blow your mind.